


time, mystical time (cutting me open then healing me fine)

by blasphemyincarnate



Series: deep breaths, everyone; your hearts are pounding [1]
Category: VALORANT (Video Game)
Genre: Canon Compliant, Childhood Friends, F/F, HEY WHY IS BOYS IN LOVE AN OFFICIAL TAG BUT NOT GIRLS IN LOVE, Podfic Welcome, girls in love :pleading_face:, hhhhhhhhh they r soft n gay, i literally don't know how to tag anything, in the vaguest sense of the term, there is so little canon that basically anything in canon verse is canon compliant
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-06-28
Updated: 2020-06-28
Packaged: 2021-03-03 19:01:33
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,020
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24970483
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/blasphemyincarnate/pseuds/blasphemyincarnate
Summary: All of a sudden, it’s not Sage the Radiant and Jett the wind girl - no, it is Zhisang and Ji-yoo and they are little girls in a strange new country, holding tight onto each other’s hands.-jett, sage, and the winding of time
Relationships: Jett/Sage (VALORANT)
Series: deep breaths, everyone; your hearts are pounding [1]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1807408
Comments: 35
Kudos: 111





	time, mystical time (cutting me open then healing me fine)

**Author's Note:**

  * For [JustAKilljoy](https://archiveofourown.org/users/JustAKilljoy/gifts).



> hhhh i've been writing mdzs fic for so long do you guys know how easy it is to tag these characters!,,,, so easy
> 
> ANYWAYS. we r playing very fast and loose w canon here because there is no canon and i have a policy of i do what i want anyways. they r very soft, and in love, and this was edited at like 12 AM so editing in the loosest sense of the word tbfh
> 
> how many people even read fic for this fandom?? i dunno but like if ur here reading this ily and appreciate u so sm <333
> 
> for justakillyjoy, my love,,, i will have more fic for u
> 
> edit: title from _invisible string_ by taylor swift, bc i am nothing if not predictable. previously _summer lovin'_

Jett meets Sage the summer before middle school, and it definitely ruins her for any sort of romance for the rest of her life. Sage is something miraculous like that, something inevitable. Jett knows she was designed to love this girl, in body, mind, and soul.

It’s before they’re Sage and Jett, though this _is_ the summer they become those girls. They start as Ji-yoo and Zhisang and being the only two Asian girls in the program (excluding a rather intimidating seventeen-year-old girl from Japan), growing into themselves in the span of one summer.

Ji-yoo walks in as Ji-yoo, and she walks out as _Jett_ , because that is who she is to Sage, and Sage is everything.

They’re in the same travel program, a chance for kids eleven through seventeen from various countries to go to America and become ‘enlightened’, or whatever. Jett’s mother is the one who insisted. “English is a life skill,” she said in lightning-fast Korean to match her lightning-fast vegetable chopping exactly one week before finagling Jett’s way into the program and America. “You need to learn it. It will make you better.”

Sage mutters something under her breath in sharp Mandarin when they’re asked to choose English names. Jett has no idea what she says, namely because she doesn’t speak Mandarin, so she says in hesitant and broken English, “What did you say?”

Sage smiles brightly at her and pulls a thinking face. “Uh, the English word,” she says, with a heavy Chinese accent. “It’s- colonize?”

Jett doesn’t recognize the word, but Sage is still smiling at her, so she smiles back.

Sage, the Japanese girl, and a girl from Russia named Vanya are her roommates for the summer - roommates being relative. They sleep in the same curtained-off section of the tour bus. Jett gets top bunk on the right, and Sage gets top bunk on the left.

“Psst, Jett,” Sage whispers one night. Her accent is fading, but nowhere near enough to be unnoticeable. Jett selfishly hopes it will never go away. She likes how Sage says her name, with the hesitation before the Ts and the curling tone. “Jett. What’s South Korea like?”

Jett flips over on her side to stare across the bus at Sage’s bunk. The other girl has her small flashlight pressed up next to her face, in lieu of turning her wall lamp on. “What’s China like?” Jett shoots back.

Sage smiles, or at least Jett thinks she does. The flashlight angle is awkward, and doesn’t light up much of her face. “A lot greyer than America,” she whispers, then giggles. “The skies are so blue here. China has good street food, though. And no one here wears a mask! I am not used to it at all.”

Jett nods. “It is like that in South Korea too,” she says. “Our street food is much better than America. America just does not have good street food at all.”

Vanya, the girl from Russia, says loudly, “New York has good street food. Now go to _sleep_ , you are keeping us all up.”

Sage giggles again, and maybe-winks at Jett as she flicks her flashlight off. Jett flips again to face the wall, but when she closes her eyes, it’s just the image of Sage giggling and smiling at her that’s seared into her eyelids.

The summer passes like that, with whispered conversations in the dark. Sage mutters things in Mandarin to herself all the time, and Jett doesn’t know what she’s actually saying, but she knows Sage well enough by the end of July to guess what it’s about.

“ _Hao hao de yi ge xiao shu dian, a,_ ” Sage mutters about the Library of Congress. Jett has zero idea what she says, but it’s almost definitely something mocking how small everywhere in America is compared to China. Even sarcastically. 

Sage is very touchy-feely, which Jett never was, but she’s always willing to make an exception for Sage. Jett sprawls on the couch, and Sage sprawls on her, and they cuddle and whisper jokes to just each other.

 _I would die happy like this_ , Jett thinks.

“You absolute lesbians,” Vanya says, but fondly. She flicks water off her fingers at Sage.

“Lesbian?” Jett asks. Sage shrugs when Jett looks at her inquiringly - her English may be much better, but sometimes she doesn’t have the answer either.

“You know,” Vanya says, waving a hand in the air distractedly, “girls who like girls.”

“Oh,” Sage says. “ _Duanxiu_. My brother’s one.”

“A lesbian?” Vanya asks, sitting up with a perplexed look.

“No,” Sage says. She twists slightly to sink between the couch cushions and Jett. “He’s a boy. But. The boy version.”

Jett looks at Sage for a very long time, rolling the word around in her mind. Huh. This is the moment of her awakening, when she realizes exactly how much Sage has come to mean to her. It’s absolutely tragic, is all she really knows, because Sage doesn’t have a phone yet, which means they won’t hear or see each other again for a good few years after this summer. 

Jett doesn’t really mind. It’s- nice, being in love with a girl like Sage. She’s everything, after all. Inevitable. 

“You have a phone, right, Jett?” Sage asks, at the end of the summer. They’re waiting in line at the airport to go through security. Sage is sitting on a barrier, kicking her feet.

Jett nods. At a nudge from their counselor, she keeps talking. “Yes,” she says. The counselor smiles approvingly at her- they like it when she makes an effort to use English. “I do.”

Sage nods. “You should give me your number,” she says. “And I will call you when I get a phone.”

Jett agrees and scrawls her Korean number onto a post-it note the counselor provides. Sage snatches it out of her hand eagerly and glances it over before tucking it into the small pocket of her backpack.

When the time comes for them to split off into separate terminals, Sage looks almost hesitant about hugging Jett. So she goes in the for the hug first, tucking her face into Sage’s long black hair.

“Bye,” she mumbles, voice muffled by the other girl’s shoulder.

Sage laughs wetly, and holds her tight. “Bye, Jett,” she says, accent still heavy. Jett will never get tired of hearing her name in that accent. She quietly wishes, yet again, that she will never lose it.

By the time they next meet, in VALORANT, Sage’s accent is gone.

<><><><><>

Six years after the summer of Sage, First Light hits the world and everything goes to shit. 

That’s how it feels, anyways. Jett almost doesn’t notice at first - but it seems like half the world’s gone, nowadays, and her hair has gone visibly white at the roots within the first week. The wind begins whispering to her, not that she speaks its language. She doesn’t know how to whisper back.

It doesn’t matter for the most part, because the wind knows her and her mood. If it pushes over that one asshole who won’t leave her alone on her commute home from work before wrapping around her shoulders like a ghostly hug, well, everyone’s better off for it.

But the wind doesn’t have a mind - it doesn’t comprehend complex emotions. Jett is furious with her mother, but only in the moment. She loves her deeply. The wind doesn’t register the love, only the anger.

The knife grazes her mother's cheek. The next day, the neighborhood is lifted right off the ground.

When Jett has successfully and somehow talked the wind into settling the houses back into the earth gently, she runs away from home. She finds out from the news later on that everyone has survived. The news anchor says her old name, says Park Ji-yoo is still missing. She shuts off the TV when her mother comes on screen.

She travels with the wind, letting it take her places for her to disappear into, among the ghosts of her past. In China she looks for Sage, because it’s always Sage, nevermind six years and the world turning upside down. She passes Mongolia with the wind beneath her feet, she wanders through Russia’s cold and thinks about Vanya.

Jett touches down in Venice.

VALORANT finds her sitting in the ruins of what used to be a canal city. It’s just ocean, now. Maybe Jett’s fault; maybe the little girl’s. But Jett is the one who is an adult, twenty one years old and year’s worth of experience. It's more her fault than anyone else's. 

She sits on one of the few remaining docks and tucks her knees up, arms wrapped around herself. Allegra has disappeared - maybe she died, maybe she sucked the air out of her own lungs. She was only eight years old. Jett can only hope she isn’t dead. Behind her, flakes of dust are still floating down from the city.

“Jett,” someone says.

Jett looks up and blinks, widely. Because it’s _Sage_ , that girl from the summer who taught her how to love, who she has never stopped loving. Sage, emerging from the fog, arriving in Jett’s hour of need.

She’s been having a lot of those, lately.

“Sage,” Jett responds. All of a sudden, it’s not Sage the Radiant and Jett the wind girl - no, it is Zhisang and Ji-yoo and they are little girls in a strange new country, holding tight onto each other’s hands.

Somewhere in the distance, she can almost imagine Vanya’s voice saying, _you absolute lesbians._

“Jett,” Sage says again. She smiles, kneels, takes Jett’s hand. Her skin is ice-cold, and there’s three blue-green spheres hanging from her belt. “Hello again.”

“You don’t have an accent anymore,” is what Jett says, like an absolute idiot. She immediately winces and curses at herself internally. She is a genius. Pine after a girl she knew for two months for almost seven years, and the first thing she says when chancing upon her again is _you don’t have an accent anymore._

Sage grins bemusedly and pulls Jett up, wrapping one arm around her shoulder just like she used to. “Neither do you,” she points out. She begins to lead Jett back towards the helicopter, where a tall figure in white is standing. “Come on. We’ll take care of you.”

Jett hears _I’ll take care of you_ , and pretends her blush is from the cold. 

“What, so I don’t level any more cities?” She teases back. The usual shame about her lack of control over the wind doesn’t hit her like she thought it would. Moving with her emotions, the wind teases Sage’s hair.

“Yeah, it’d be great if you didn’t do that,” the main in white drawls. He stands up straight and offers a hand to her. “Cypher.”

Jett looks at him for a moment, then takes his hand. She glances at Sage, who gives her a nod, like a go-ahead. “Jett,” she responds. “Nice to meet you.”

Cypher doesn’t exactly have visible eyes to light up, but he moves his head in a way that suggests he’s having a realization. “Ah,” he says, voice taking on a teasing tone. “You’re Sage’s Jett.”

Sage hides her face in her hands. Jett _doesn’t_ unconsciously reach for her hand again. “Cypher,” Sage mutters. “Please shut up.”

“Oh?” Jett says, turning to face Sage. She grins, bolstered by some sort of strange confidence, and puts a hand on Sage’s shoulder. “I’m _your_ Jett, am I?”

Sage glares at her, but it’s fond. “Maybe you are,” she counters. “But I’ll bet people call me your Sage, too.”

Jett flushes pink and tries very hard not to think about the entire year her friends spent teasing her about the foreign girl she fell in love with, asking how _her_ Sage was.

Sage smiles triumphantly and lifts one icy hand to rest it over Jett’s on her shoulder. “I am, for the record,” she says softly. “Yours, as long as you’ll have me.”

Jett’s breath catches. “As long as you’ll have me,” she responds.

Sage smiles brightly at her, like she did when they first met.

  
  


**Author's Note:**

> [my tumblr](https://insert-cleverurl.tumblr.com)
> 
> translations for what sage says:  
> hao has de yi ge xiao shu dian, a - what a nice little bookshop  
> duanxiu - cutsleeve, a term for gay men in Chinese (it's not an insult)
> 
> now with fanart of the reunion scene by the lovely aysrin!!
> 
> comments and kudos make the world go round! stay safe, everyone <33


End file.
